Read Online Hell's Heart by John Jackson Miller - Free Book Online

estates, living apart and feeling in charge, and while they’re out of his hair, the house prospers.”
    Riker appeared to take it all in. “Well, this is useful,” he finally said. “Maybe that’s why Galdor and Martok thought our putting on a show would earn us the house’s appreciation. We advance the family legend for them.”
    Worf was certain that was true. But he was less certain of something else. “What should I do now?”
    Picard looked across the table at him. “What do you mean?”
    â€œKahless asked me to give him a historic account of the battle. Let us say that the nobles were present only as witnesses. The fighting, if any, they might have left to mercenaries.” Hiseyes widened. “I think that is entirely possible. What, then, do I tell Kahless? He would sooner honor . . . I should not say.”
    Worf felt he had said too much as it was. But Picard appeared to realize the gravity of what he was talking about. He looked with alarm at Riker. The admiral rubbed his left temple. “We need this to go well, Worf. All this work . . .”
    Worf stared at the table. “I know.”
    â€œI do too,” Riker said after a pause. He shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing else to be done. You have to tell him the truth. Let the chips fall where they may. I know who’ll have to pick them up.”

Seven
    V ALANDRIS ’ S E XPEDITION
    O UTER E DGE OF THE G AMARAL S YSTEM
    T he three space tugs were mighty vehicles, far larger than anything Valandris had seen during her secret sojourn in Federation space. Each ungainly vessel hauled a rectangular container four hundred meters long and three hundred meters across. According to the manifest obtained from Leotis, each cargo unit contained enormous stone blocks and columns crafted by the finest artisans. Giant puzzle pieces, they would be beamed to their proper locations on the surface, where they would form a colonnade arcing around a stone plaza.
    It made sense, Valandris thought; no one was going to dig a quarry on Gamaral for a single day’s fete. But it was hard to celebrate the cleverness of people engaged in such a misguided effort. No matter: she would have something to say about that soon enough.
    Sadly, the Orion crime lord hadn’t lasted ten seconds in battle with her. But Leotis’s information had been accurate in all respects, including when the tugs would arrive at Gamaral. Valandris’s ships had waited under cloak in the outer reaches of the system, poised like so many hensyl waiting for the vessels to emerge from warp. They moved swiftly once the mammoth haulers arrived. The tugs were within firing range in seconds—but that was not what she was here to do.
    â€œClose in.” Valandris still wore her face-obscuring environment suit; they all did. There would be no time to suit up later. “We’re in the corridor. Stay on your approach vector.”
    The vocabulary of the starship still sounded odd in her mouth. Valandris had been born to hunt things on land, notships in space. But she, and her people, had taken to it quickly. Stalking was stalking: a starship was just another weapon. There was no weapon she could not learn to use.
    Still, it was a tricky thing, navigating in close to the tugs when three of her cloaked companion vessels were doing the same. But each of their captains had an assigned trajectory, and they had trained for this moment incessantly over the past several months.
    â€œClosing on the cargo module,” Raneer said. “Contact in four, three, two . . .” A soft clang resounded through the ship’s innards. “Footpads down.”
    â€œDeploy magnetic field.” Valandris rocked forward in her seat—and fell back into it as their starship came to a halt.
    â€œWe’re level and locked,” Tharas said from the seat beside hers. “Riding pretty—like a mote fly landing on